Evelyn, who incidentally notices that the abbey precincts had become divided between "several pretty villas and fine gardens of the most excellent fruits," remarks on the excellence of Sir W. Temple's orangery, and the perfect training of the wall-fruit trees in his garden. Here the retired statesman, away from the hurly-burly of politics, meditated on horticulture and indited epistles, while King James was vainly grasping at a tyranny, and the Prince of Orange was marching eastward from Torbay. When that prince became king he visited Temple at Sheen, but after this time the latter chiefly resided at Moor Park; so that it is with this place rather than Sheen that the memory of his young secretary, afterwards the noted Dean of St. Patrick, is associated. All traces of the ancient monastery have now disappeared, the last remains having been destroyed about the year 1769. The "Kew Observatory," which we have already noticed, stands isolated among the broad meadows, away from dust and noise, and from the reverberation of traffic. It was built for George III. by Sir William Chambers, "for the purpose of studying astronomical science with special reference to the transit of Venus." But after a time its activity declined, and for many years "Kew may be said to have quietly glided into a long winter of hibernation, being under the careful guardianship of a curator and reader." Attention was once directed towards it in a painful way, a double murder having been committed by the janitor, a man named Little, previously much respected in the neighbourhood, who was arrested in the house of his victims and duly executed in the year 1795. The observatory was suppressed by Sir Robert Peel, and the building offered to the Royal Society. That body, however, refused to undertake the charge, as it did not possess any funds applicable for the purpose, but by means of the subscriptions of various men of science, and a grant from the British Association, an observatory for meteorological and electrical observations was established under the charge of a committee, at which much important work was done. In the year 1871 the grant of the British Association was withdrawn, and a sum of £10,000 was placed in the hands of the Royal Society by Mr. Gassiot, for the maintenance of magnetic observations at Kew. It is now under the charge of a committee termed the Meteorological Council, and is the central establishment for observations relating to meteorology. Here instruments relating to this science are tested and marked, and a large amount of most valuable work is executed.